WHY DID WE START

While working with teams from all around the world I came to realize that, of course, hard skills as a leader are more than welcomed (showing that you have a deep understanding of complex situations, being able to challenge solutions and push the team’s reasoning even deeper to find the root causes of a problem and end up with a better solution; all this gives you credibility and wins you the trust of your team).

However, that is not enough.

Nowadays, teams are incredibly diverse culturally, and understanding every little cultural difference is close to impossible.

Personal Mastery, Leadership, System Thinking

What saves you as a leader are soft skills like self-awareness, empathy, great communication skills. In short, personal mastery. And if you add to that a little system thinking, you are well above the norm.

These are exactly the skills they are not teaching you at school, nor at business school.

Plus, when you are busy working, traveling, taking care of family matters, studying to keep up to date with the fast change in the technical skills, where can you find even more time to study and develop soft skills? (Because, yes, you might not be a natural communicator, but you can learn how to become one. And, yes, empathy and self-awareness can be developed. And, yes again, you can change your reasoning style from reacting to events – and inevitably blaming someone/somebody else for the negative outcome – to seeing patterns of behavior and ultimately understanding that we are part of a system and that every outcome is a result of the forces at play inside the system.)

Again, how do you find the time to search for the appropriate resources and study them?

Of course, there are the leadership courses your company sends you to, but how can you be 100% present when in the same time you have so many fires to fight back in the office?

Personal Fulfillment. Professional Growth

Wouldn’t it be better to have the time to study and read at your own pace, when you choose to do it, when you are fully present and when you still have enough energy left to understand the benefit of what you are reading?

And, yes, it would be better to have a well-organized, nicely currated well-chosen library full of thought-provoking reads, book reviews, practical guides, quick and effective training programs, to help you uncover new areas of knowledge. It’s not knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It’s practical knowledge for the sake of helping you become a better person and a better leader as a result.

Because it’s like learning how to ski: the better you know how to do it, the less energy you waste and the more you enjoy it. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

The Idea

That’s how I came up with the idea of The Busy Lifestyle. An online portal for business leaders and entrepreneurs who understand that successful is not the same as fulfilled therefore they thrive to find the right balance between their professional and personal lives.

A source of information that’s not only useful and informative but it’s also fun and helps relieve the pressure from the everyday job.

The Magazine

It’s divided into two parts: a free section, The Busy Lifestyle Magazine, that features shorter articles about personal development, leadership and entrepreneurship, interviews with interesting personalities and fun twists on serious subjects (all work, no fun is not a good thing).

The Library

And a second part, subscription based, The Busy Lifestyle Library, that has more in-depth articles about personal mastery, leadership, entrepreneurship, system thinking and some other topics that will help you unlock your human potential and multiply your professional success.

Because when we learn something new, we can’t look at the world any longer with the same eyes as before. Our vision improves, our understanding is deeper, and the solutions we provide from this new place can make a difference.

The Busy Lifestyle Library aims to be this source of fresh content.

The Team

That sounds a lot, right? There must be a big team to keep this running.

Not really. To keep the infrastructure running our team of 8 fantastic people spread around the world is doing a fantastic job. (5 cities on 2 continents. And not even the same 5 cities all the time. Ben, the graphic designer, thought it’s a good idea to travel the world while working.)

The Contributors

We also have a number of contributors every month. They are executive coaches, business leaders and entrepreneurs and we want to thank them for having shared their time, experience and knowledge with us.

Since 2017

We have started this adventure in July 2017. It was (and it still is) an interesting learning experience. Quite a fun one I can say. However, it’s not sunny everyday (you wouldn’t believe that starting a company is a fair weather journey, would you?). Sometimes it’s hard and we feel like giving up. And those are the days when we remember why we started:

When we learn something new, we can’t look at the world any longer with the same eyes as before. Our vision improves, our understanding is deeper, and the solutions we provide from this new place can make a difference.

I hope you will join us for a part of our journey, that you will benefit from our efforts, but most of all that you will become the person you always wanted to be and the kind of leader that can make a difference!